The Future of Food - Simon Heuschkel - 30.12.2018pdf
The Future of Food - Simon Heuschkel - 30.12.2018pdf
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  2. Table of ContentsIntroduction 2 Why this report?2How to read this document?2Who I am3Why I did this Trip and how I became interested in Urban Gardening3Why Urban Gardening and Urban Farming is important5Reports 7 Incredible Edible (IE) Movement7Incredible Edible Swindon8Incredible Edible Bristol10Incredible Edible Todmorden12Incredible Edible Aireborough15Incredible Edible Hitchin17The Network Approach18Brighton & Hove Food Partnership18Feed Leeds20Business Approach21Grow Up and Rootlabs in London21LUU Rooted - University of Leeds ́ Rooftop Garden23SKIP Garden - Kingscross, London25Mediamatic Amsterdam - Aquaponics Farm and Restaurant26Other Projects28Back to Front - Leeds28Bedford Fields Forest Garden - Leeds29Sky Garden - London31Conclusion 33 Learnings33Incredible Edible is about community and inspiring people33Kindness reaches into day to day decisions33Community involvement and good outside communication is key. 33(Urban) Gardening is a tool.34Collaboration - There is not the one solution that fits it all! 36Unanswered question for me:To what degree is indoor farming ”sustainable“?38Closing Words39
  3. Resources 40 List of Projects I visited: 40United Nations Research and Predictions: 40Incredible Edible40Network Approach 40Inspiring Indoor Farming Companies 41Educational Videos 41Learn more about Hydroponics, Aquaponics and Aeroponics41Other42
  4. Introduction The Future of Food Simon Heuschkel1/42
  5. Introduction Hello, I am glad you made it here. A lot of interesting and important insights will await you, if you keep on reading. In July 2018, (3.-25.07.2018) I was traveling to England, on my own, to explore the urban gardening movement. In this report you will mainly find summaries and insights of the 16 different projects that I personally visited. They range from community gardens of all sorts, to forest gardens, urban agriculture businesses to game changing initiatives.Why this report? There are two reasons, why I made the effort to write about my experiences in England. Firstly, I wanted to share my insights, experiences and the knowledge I gained with other people. I realized, that not everyone is able to travel and to experience what I experienced. The report is my way to share all my insights and learnings from the trip about urban gardening in particular and about urban agriculture in general. Even the people who asked me about my trip did not get the full story, because it simply took too long to explain everything in detail. So, here is your opportunity. The second reason is, that I wanted to put together a resource for myself and others, that gathers materials and links to other inspiring projects, ideas and resources around the topics of urban gardening/agriculture, food production, and current problems the world is facing (growing population, hunger, food shortage). This entire field is so extremely interesting and has so many different facets, that this report is only meant as a starting point, that probably only scratches the surface. I want to inspire other people and make them think about the future of food and forward thinking solutions. How to read this document? This document is structured in three parts. The introduction, the reports and the conclusion. In the introduction, I will talk about my personal reasons why I started this trip to England, where my interest for this topic comes from, and what problems the world is facing. These texts will be partly informed by personal experience, but mostly be researched and only very basic, because they can be read more in depth outside of this document. In the Reports section, I focus on my personal experience that I gained during the trip to England. Here you will find stories, description, methods and all sorts of interesting observations of the different projects I visited. Some projects, I did not visit personally, but I simply included them, because I thought them valuable. If you feel at any point, that the document is too much to read, you can also just skip this part and jump to the conclusion section right away, where I distill my learnings. In the conclusion section, I will try to answer some of the questions I had, when I left for England. I will also try to share more general learnings and give an outlook on where we might head towards the future. In this section, you will also find the resources, with links to projects, and other interesting websites, videos and material.Since this is not supposed to be a scientific paper, but rather meant as a personal work for myself that I want to share with others, this document is very personal and subjective, especially the report section. However for the other (researched) parts of the document, I tried to be as scientific and correct as possible. I did not go into too much detail and only The Future of Food Simon Heuschkel2/42
  6. scratch the surface by design because more information can always be found in the original sources.Therefore this report is meant to inspire, provoke and make people think as well as spark interest to learn more about this topic. It is meant as tool for others, so feel free to jump around in this document and use it to your advantage. I hope that this document is a valuable read for anyone interested! Who I am My name is Simon Heuschkel. I am 20 years old, and I study Product Management at the CODE University in Berlin. I am interested in many different domains and one of them is 1Urban Agriculture. One of my mantras is ”Use your work, to create the biggest possible value for the world“. At my current situation, I feel like urban agriculture, can live up to my mantra, and to my wish to find valuable solutions to problems that are actually important and relevant to the world. For further information you can always reach out to me on LinkedIn or via email.2Why I did this Trip and how I became interested in Urban Gardening To understand why I am so fascinated by the idea of urban gardening/agriculture we have to go back some years. I was watching TED-Talks, like I often do, and about two years ago (2016) I came across a talk from 2012 named „How we can eat our landscapes“ by 1https://code.berlin LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/heuschkelsimon/ ; Email: s.heu@outlook.de2The Future of Food Simon Heuschkel3/42
  7. Pam Warhurst. In this inspiring Ted-Talk she talked about a small town in the north of 3England, near Manchester, called Todmorden, where a bunch of volunteers decided to change how we think about our food. They turned public and unloved spaces in Todmorden into beautiful vegetable beds, to publicly grow food for everyone to pick. Soon the community got involved, local businesses were supported and people finally started to talk about where their food comes from and joined in. I was totally bought, after they explained, that their model is replicable and that other cities in England and around the world did the same and called themselves ”Incredible Edible“ I got inspired about the fact that a small town in the north of England was able to start a movement with very little resources that resonates with people around the world. Thanks to the TED-Talk playlist, other videos about urban food projects started playing like ”A garden in my apartment“ by Britta Riley or ”A guerrilla gardener in South Central 4LA“ by Ron Finley. This got me thinking: ”Is this urban gardening really a thing?“ Not just 5in England with ”Incredible Edible“ but around the world, people start thinking about food and local food production. The inspiring part for me was, that people like Ron Finlay and Britta Riley were able to involve their entire community that actually seemed to care. In school we were discussing genetically modified food, with its promises and downsides. We learned that companies like Monsanto, try to tell us that GMO is supposed to be the solution to feed 9 billion+ people, because GMO is all about optimizing the productivity of the crops. Still local farmers complain about the genetically modified crops. It seems that they don’t always bring the food productivity and resilience that the companies promised and that the farmers become heavily dependent on GMO once they start.I did not think about these things for a long time, but when the time was ready, I decided to see the ”original“ Incredible Edible city where it all started - Todmorden. I soon realized that there are many more ”Incredible Edible Towns“ in the UK that I could visit too. The idea for this trip was born. I wanted to get to the ground of these urban food projects. Find out how the people in Todmorden started it, how other people replicated their modellike Pam Warhurst stated in the TED-Talk, and what other projects around urban gardening are out there. I wanted to know if these projects are actually able to feed cities and what impact these projects have on their local communities and businesses. Here is a map of the cities where I personally visited project’s during my travels. https://www.ted.com/talks/pam_warhurst_how_we_can_eat_our_landscapes34https://www.ted.com/talks/britta_riley_a_garden_in_my_apartment/up-next5https://www.ted.com/talks/ron_finley_a_guerilla_gardener_in_south_central_la?language=enThe Future of Food Simon Heuschkel4/42
  8. Why Urban Gardening and Urban Farming is important In this section I will put my initial thoughts from chapter ”Why I did this Trip“ into perspective, and look at some facts, why urban agriculture will be important in the future. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations gives a really good overview about ”the state of the world’s land and water resources for food and agriculture“ in their same named report. They state that „current projections indicate that the world 6population will increase from 6.9 billion people today to 9.1 billion in 2050. In addition, economic progress, notably in the emerging countries, translates into increased demand for food and diversified diets. World food demand will surge as a result, and it is projected that food production will increase by 70 percent in the world and by 100 percent in the developing countries. Yet both land and water resources, the basis of our food production, are finite and already under heavy stress, and future agricultural productionwill need to be more productive and more sustainable at the same time.“ The second big trend that will impact agriculture are the estimates in UN ́s „World Urbanization Prospects: 2018 Revision“ about urbanization. 7„Globally, more people live in urban areas than in rural areas, with 55% of the world’s population residing in urban areas in 2018. In 1950, 30 % of the world’s population was urban, and by 2050, 68% of the world’s population is projected to be urban.“Singapore for example imports 90% of their food, which creates unique challenges. 8They heavily rely on importing countries and are highly vulnerable to price changes and delivery issues. Urban agriculture could be one solution to cover at least some of the cities food demand to make Singapore more independent and self-reliant. The fact that 68% of the world’s population will live in urban areas, results in an increase of long delivery ways for food as well as a loss of quality (freshness), because the food has to be preserved for a growing number of days. The findings can certainly look like a problem that only big companies or politics can solve, but maybe we as the people, can contribute our part to the solution. Precisely this question motivated me to find out what is already there and if we can actually have an impact. And if yes, how it would look like. The State of the World's Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture6(http://www.fao.org/3/a-i1688e.pdf)7https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/ ; https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2018-KeyFacts.pdfhttps://www.ava.gov.sg/explore-by-sections/food/singapore-food-supply/the-food-we-eat8The Future of Food Simon Heuschkel5/42
  9. Reports The Future of Food Simon Heuschkel6/42
  10. Reports This section will be about the projects that I have visited during my travels. I will give a short overview about their history and how the projects evolved. I will also talk about my experience of the project and insights from all the good conversations I had. The links to the project’s websites are in the resource sections as well as in the footnotes. Incredible Edible (IE) Movement The Incredible Edible Movement started in 2008, in a small town called ”Todmorden“ in the north of England. They were a bunch of volunteers, wanting to connect their local communities through food. ”Incredible Edible sought to show how ordinary people can transform their own landscapes and turned disused plots into abundant sources of healthy food“. So they started to plant edible plants around their town, in public spaces, 9free for everyone to pick. This quickly evolved into a replicable model: The model consists of three ”core ideas“ or ”plates“ as they call it. The ”learning“, ”community“ and ”business“ plate. The learning plate aims at teaching people in all ages about "the art of growing and soil science, the art of cooking and preserving“. This happens through workshops, events, 10or people taking part in the public gardening sessions. Even people stopping by and wondering why they can eat the landscape counts into that. The community plate, is all about creating strong communities through local food. Even the very fact that all of the public growing patches are producing edible food to share, free to pick for everyone, gives us a sense of the community they are trying to build and are building. „Believe in the power of small actions“ and „KINDNESS“ are two strong mantras of theirs. The business plate, tries to support local businesses. Local businesses can use blackboards to state which of their produce are produced locally. This makes it easier for the consumer to pick the produce they really want and to raise awareness for local and seasonal food. These ”plates“ are closely interconnected. One would not work without the other. I think, this is what makes it such a promising approach to urban gardening. To support new groups and to connect existing IE projects the ”Incredible Edible Network“ was born with the inspiring TED-Talk „How we can eat our landscapes“ by 11Pam Warhurst in 2012.The IE Network provides layouts, useful material and best practices that helps groups to setup public growing patches. In rare cases, the network is able to support local groups monetarily too. Today, many places around the UK (100+) and around the world (600+) have adopted the model of Incredible Edible (Todmorden). Some of them take the original idea very seriously and others use the definition of IE more vaguely. Besides the cities, other spin offs like farms or companies evolved from that movement too. Below you will find five IE projects that I visited.https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk/what-we-do/#community910https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk/what-we-do/#learninghttps://www.incredibleedible.org.uk11The Future of Food Simon Heuschkel7/42
  11. Incredible Edible Swindon12I only spent one evening in Swindon, therefore I was really happy that I could take part in one of their gardening sessions on one of their beds. This area, located next to an old hospital, has been around for two and a half years and consisted of one pollination bed, several vegetable beds as well as an area for herbs. Pollination beds are areas specifically designed for animals. They are mostly filled with flowers which is especially important for bees, meaning ”edible for bees“ - no bees no fruits.Swindon has around ten different public growing spaces, from which I have seen one. The entire group of volunteers of IE Swindon is split up in smaller groups and is organized around these ten growing areas. So as a volunteer you focus only on one bed, instead of everyone focusing on all the beds. This is a unique concept that I have not encountered in the other cities that I have visited. This concept strengthens the connection between the volunteers and their growing beds, because the volunteers are more able to follow the progress of their plants. Another advantage is shorter drive ways because volunteers can choose the bed which is nearest to them, instead of all the volunteers look after all the beds. This only makes sense in bigger cities/towns, but is certainly an approach to consider. Important to mention is though, that everyone sees themselves as part of IE Swindon. Generally, I was astounded how little work, compared to the result, was put in to making this beautiful bed. They told me that in the winter times, they meet every second week for about an hour, to plan the next season. This means, building new beds, getting the soil etc. Then in spring they have some kick-off events with some more work involved to plant all the crops and get the growing running. During the summer time, when I was there, they meet once a week, for about one hour. The main job is watering (if it does not rain), harvesting, or small tasks like weeding. We were four people including me, although some people of that group were missing. I was really surprised that once the „hard work“, the planting and the creation of the plots are done, only one hour a week is sufficient, to run this area. This gave me hope, in a sense that if done right, there is not really much work to do (at least for one part of the year). What’s important to note is that nearly everywhere I went, they complained about the drought this summer. In many places in the UK it had not rained for over 6 weeks (beginning of July 2018). The huge advantage to this location was, that there was a water supply that they could https://www.edibleswindon.co.uk12The Future of Food Simon Heuschkel8/42
  12. use because it was located in front of an old hospital. They told me, you never need to water by hand, because normally it literally rains every two days. So water supply is definitely something that needs to be considered before starting an urban garden somewhere. As explained earlier one reason for my trip was the question as to whether these ideas are actually capable of feeding cities, or if they could at least cover parts of our food needs.David, one of the people that day, works as a digital marketeer but studies gardening (horticulture) on the side. His main goal is not about food production itself but about the community and people learning about food. The best thing that could happen to him, he told me, would be for people to stop by, get inspired by the work of IE Swindon, realizing that growing your own food is easier than they thought and eventually ending up, growing their own food at home. It is really important for him that people finally learn again about seasonal and regional food, and how to grow their own, who knows when we will need this skill. For Hanna another volunteer around my age (20), the most important reason why she volunteered was the fresh vegetables that she could take home. Sometimes she is disappointed because someone else took the food although she had put in all the work, she told me. But then again, it’s about kindness and small actions. When I asked David about his most valuable tip he said this: If you are going to start a bed always involve the community around it. Knock on doors, schedule an event, ask them if they want to volunteer and what they would like to see in the bed. Without community no success. Many projects in Swindon failed because they didn’t involve the community. As soon as they are involved people care and protect the space. I would receive this advice many more times during my trip. One example of a community lead project in Swindon was this: Some people had the idea to create small vegetable beds in their front garden, which is accessible to anyone. They invited their neighbors and friends to an event where they shared their idea. It turned out that many people wanted a veg garden in their front garden too. So they offered workshops in the beginning of the year where they shared techniques on how to build your very own veg bed, how to plant the right plants and how to take care of them. Most of the material was donated. The first year was such a success, that the next year, people started to do their own veg beds again and new people joined in! Because they involved the community and more people joined in, this idea was actually something that people respected and felt proud of. What I especially liked was the use of signs in their beds. They used different signs to indicate the type of plant, what is ready to harvest and what needs some more time, as well as one big blackboard, where they could display all sorts of information for people who would walk by. The credit for the blackboard-idea goes to IE Bristol, according to David. I was also happy to be a witness of people stopping by and encountering IE (Swindon) for the first time. It was a small kid with its parents and all of them seemed to be really intrigued by the idea to grow food yourself, and especially doing so in public spaces. After a quick chat, they helped watering some plants with their kid, and seemed to like it. They left with a smile on their face and with a newly sparked idea. Looking back on this visit, I have to say, that this was one of the most well looked after beds I encountered within the Incredible Edible projects.The Future of Food Simon Heuschkel9/42
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